Gift Wrapped by Peter Turnbull

return.’
    â€˜Oh.’ Muriel Bond gave a brief smile. ‘Since you put it like that.’
    â€˜Yes.’ Yellich sat forward. ‘We’d like to know about James Wenlock.’
    â€˜You know, I thought that’d be what you wanted to know about.’ Muriel Bond nodded. ‘I saw the news, I read the papers ... I knew that’s why you called on little me. I am going to go there ... it’s on my bucket list.’
    â€˜Where?’ Yellich asked. ‘Where are you going to go before you kick it?’
    â€˜Wenlock Edge,’ Muriel Bond replied flatly. ‘James said he’d take me there and then he vanished, he did. Now his body has been found I think I will go there and light a candle for him.’
    â€˜It would be a better thing to do than spend your time shoplifting,’ Ventnor snarled.
    â€˜Oh ... I’ll have to go lifting to raise the bus fare, sweetie ...’ Muriel Bond winked at Ventnor. ‘Old Muriel can’t raise the money no other way.’
    â€˜So,’ Yellich continued, as Ventnor sat back, deflated by her reply, ‘you’ll know that your husband threatened him.’
    â€˜He did ... and it’s ex-hubby, if you don’t mind. I got out of that mess eventually ... after he put me in hospital – it was then that I left. I’d had a few black eyes and a sore face and bruised ribs, but that’s marriage, isn’t it? You expect that, but when he found out about James, well, I woke up in hospital all plastered up like an Egyptian mummy and I still have no memory of the attack. That’s why he got away with it – because I had no memory of it and there were no witnesses; he made sure of that. I was apparently found by the roadside. He took me out of the house, going for a drive, he said ... he just wanted to get me out of the house and into a field ... after dusk. A motorist found me by the roadside and called an ambulance. They thought I was the victim of a hit and run, then they realized the injuries didn’t match up to a hit and run – more like an assault. But I didn’t remember anything, like I said, and in a field at night, there’s not many witnesses, darlin’ ... not a lot of eyes. Despite what they say about the woods having ears and the fields having eyes ... there were no eyes in that field that old night – not when Muriel was getting her hiding. He was a trawlerman on the Hull trawlers. A hard man.’
    â€˜Was?’ Yellich queried.
    â€˜Yes, darlin’, was.’ Muriel Bond leaned back in her chair, clearly beginning to relax in the officers’ presence. ‘The fishing’s gone now. He was on the last of the trawlers. You know, I felt safe with him at first ... I felt I was being totally protected. He was a large man and it was that that made me feel safe but when he turned on me ... and his fist was as big as my face ... then I felt the opposite. Sometimes he’d punch me just because he felt like it or just out of spite. He was that sort of man, Shane Bond. So that was my lot until James Wenlock came into my life like a ray of sunshine ... a rescuer ... but he wouldn’t leave his wife. Me, though, I would have left Shane like a shot.’
    â€˜Shane?’ Yellich asked. ‘Your ex-husband, Shane Bond?’
    â€˜Yes, darlin’, Shane Bond.’ Muriel Bond smiled. ‘What a silly name; it makes him sound like a cowboy, doesn’t it? Shane Bond ... tall in the saddle with his Colt 45s and his Winchester repeating rifle.’
    â€˜Can I ask,’ Yellich said, ‘how long you and James Wenlock were involved with each other?’
    â€˜Just a few months, darlin’. Over the spring and the following summer, so not very long ...’ Muriel Bond glanced up at the ceiling. ‘No ... no ... longer than that, from the winter into the summer, maybe, but it was definitely less than a year. We met at a singles bar – I might